“You needna be feared that I’ll speak that name loud enough for her to hear,” said Nancy, answering Lilias’ look rather than her words. “I have more respect for her than that. Poor body! she must carry a sore heart about with her, for all she looks so quiet and contented like.”
Lilias sighed. The same thought had come into her own mind many and many a time within the last few months.
“Did my cousin Hugh do anything so very bad?” she asked, looking anxiously into Mrs Stirling’s face.
“I dare say the folk that blame him most have done far worse things than anything they can lay to his charge,” said Nancy; “but there’s little doubt he did what made him fear to look on his mother’s face again, or wherefore should he not have come back? His name has never, to my knowledge, passed her lips from that day till this.”
“But Donald Ross, up among the hills, told Archie that folk thought he had ’listed for a soldier, and that he couldna come back again.”
“Well, maybe not,” said Nancy. “Far be it from me to seek to make worse what is bad enough already. It’s not unlikely. But, as I was saying, Archie’s growing awfu’ like him, and it is to be hoped he will not take to ill ways. You should have an eye upon him, Lilias, my woman, that he doesn’t take up with folk that ‘call evil good, and good evil.’ It was that was the ruin of Hugh Blair,—poor laddie!”
“Archie sees no one among the hills that can do him harm,” said Lilias, hastily,—“only Donald Ross and the Muirlands shepherds, and now and then a herd-laddie from Alliston. He ay tells us, when he comes home, who he has seen.”
“Eh, woman! I didn’t mean to anger you,” exclaimed Nancy. “I declare, your eyes are glancing like two coals. But, if your aunt is wise, she’ll put him to some kind of work before long. Laddies like him must ay be about something; and if they are doing no good it’s likely they’ll be doing evil. Your aunt should know that well enough, without the like of me to tell her.”
“But Archie is such a mere child,” remonstrated Lilias, forgetting for the moment that it was Mrs Stirling, the grumbler for the countryside, that was speaking. “What ill can he get among the hills? And, besides, what work could he do? It’s health for him to wander about among the hills. It makes him strong.”
“You’re a child yourself for that matter,” said Nancy; “and I’m thinking what with those children’s catechism and work, and one thing and another, you do the most part of a woman’s work. And what’s to hinder your brother more than you? It would keep him out of harm’s way.”